I just purchased a Roku Media Stick & whenever I play an MKV or MP4 with AC3 in it, there is no audio. I had started with the regular Roku profile that comes with Serviio, and then when I found this thread, I tried the Roku 4 profile... I still have no audio.

The files play fine with Plex, so I'm assuming it's a profile issue.

MediaInfo shows this as the audio format that won't play using files I have:

What is the video codec with these files? If it's not mpeg2, the Stick can play it without transcoding. I checked one of my MKV files and the audio is identical to yours except for the bitrate. However, I know the bitrate isn't an issue because I've tested numerous ac3 bitrates and have always had sound.

Just for grins, try this profile. I'm not claiming it's perfect yet, but I'd like to see if it helps with your issue. It has to be in the Profiles file below the original Roku profile, or Serviio won't start.

The two files you posted here should play without transcoding at all, although the 2nd one has 5 channel AAC audio, and I'm not certain the Roku can play that. Change to the Generic profile and see if they work. If they do, then we have to figure out what's triggering the unnecessary transcoding.

Matt2112 wrote:Neither have sound when using the "Generic DLNA Profile". Both play with sound on the Roku using Plex.

The file with 5.1 AAC doesn't surprise me about no sound, since not all Roku players support AAC 5.1. But the one with AC3 does stump me.

Is the Stick plugged directly into the TV, or is it plugged into an AVR first? My guess is the TV. Check your audio setting, and if it's on Auto try changing it to stereo or DD (not certain what the options are).

Matt2112 wrote:Neither have sound when using the "Generic DLNA Profile". Both play with sound on the Roku using Plex.

The file with 5.1 AAC doesn't surprise me about no sound, since not all Roku players support AAC 5.1. But the one with AC3 does stump me.

Is the Stick plugged directly into the TV, or is it plugged into an AVR first? My guess is the TV. Check your audio setting, and if it's on Auto try changing it to stereo or DD (not certain what the options are).

It's plugged directly into the TV and is already set to stereo. Both files play through the Roku on my TV using Plex, so I don't think it's a Roku compatibility issue. I'm half tempted to just buy a Samsung BD-J6300... I feel pretty confident that'll work.

There certainly are advantages to using a BD player, mostly for HD audio support. Even the best of them though won't have the potential offerings of the Roku player. Of course, having 1000s of apps available doesn't imply they are any good!

Plex uses something besides ffmpeg for their transcoding, and as such they seem to be able to play stuff that has issues elsewhere. I'm waiting for Roku to push a firmware update to see if it resolves the transcoding issue I've encountered with Serviio.

I have not been on this forum in a while, but I recently got a roku4 (premiere), and wanted to get the latest profile for it.I added ("Roku 4 Media Player") in the profiles.xml, after the standard "Roku media Player" one, removing the general transcoding section as mentioned by another user, but I wanted to be sure this is the latest profile that should be used with the Roku 4 premiere.

As a side note, my biggest issue with Roku media player and Serviio, is the inability to FFW and RW. I read that there were a couple of thing Serviio needed to implement for that to work, is there any visibility if / when that would happen ?

Thanks again for a great product and all the support

EDIT, I just noticed that if I use the Chaneru profile, I am actually able to FFW and RW, I guess because of the transcoding. Question above remains with the new profile

I have not been on this forum in a while, but I recently got a roku4 (premiere), and wanted to get the latest profile for it.I added ("Roku 4 Media Player") in the profiles.xml, after the standard "Roku media Player" one, removing the general transcoding section as mentioned by another user, but I wanted to be sure this is the latest profile that should be used with the Roku 4 premiere.

As a side note, my biggest issue with Roku media player and Serviio, is the inability to FFW and RW. I read that there were a couple of thing Serviio needed to implement for that to work, is there any visibility if / when that would happen ?

Thanks again for a great product and all the support

EDIT, I just noticed that if I use the Chaneru profile, I am actually able to FFW and RW, I guess because of the transcoding. Question above remains with the new profile

I've been waiting for Roku to release firmware 7.6, as it fixed several issues that was causing problems with Serviio. Now that it is available, I am hoping to have a new set of Roku profiles available for the next release of Serviio (1.9). As you noted, Chaneru allows FF and rewind. This is because Chaneru uses the HLS format for transcoding, while the other Roku profiles use MPEG-TS. The reason I'm not using HLS at this time is because Serviio does not currently support 5.1 audio using HLS transcoding. Zip is looking into the possibility of adding it, but until then I prefer to keep 5.1 audio available. If you are connected directly to a TV, without a AVR inbetween, then the 5.1 audio isn't an issue for you.

One other thing with the Chaneru profile is that it restricts the video bitrate, which isn't necessary with the latest Roku players. The upcoming profiles I'm building will only restrict bitrate for the older players (I plan on providing several different profiles, based on player ability).

One last thing: your Premiere is not a version of the Roku 4. It is new architecture and is superior to the 4 in several ways. Most importantly, the Premiere + (not the basic Premiere) supports 4K HDR, has an Ethernet jack and SD card slot. The Premiere (basic) has better hardware than the 4, but is lacking the Ethernet jack and SD slot.

Thank you for the detailed reply.I did not realize the premiere was a generation above the 4.Although I do go through an AVR, having the FFW functionality is more important to me as I want to use it to watch Recorded TV from Windows media center wirelessly, and I need to be able to skip commercials

scrambler wrote:Thank you for the detailed reply.I did not realize the premiere was a generation above the 4.Although I do go through an AVR, having the FFW functionality is more important to me as I want to use it to watch Recorded TV from Windows media center wirelessly, and I need to be able to skip commercials

I will keep an eye for your new profiles

That's why I use VideoReDo and remove the commercials before I add them to my server.

I still use Windows 7 Windows Media Center for anything I want to record off the air. MCEBuddy converts them to H.264 (so I don't have to do it with VRD), then I use VRD to remove the commercials. Since I've already converted the MPEG2 video to H.264, it only takes a matter of minutes to remove the commercials and save them to my server location.

Does the commercial removal happens automatically alter a show has recorded, or do you have to launch the process?How accurate is the process, do you sometimes end up with remaining commercial pieces or actual show being cutoff?I assume you have to wait for the show to have finished recording before the removal process can be applied.

Does the commercial removal happens automatically alter a show has recorded, or do you have to launch the process?How accurate is the process, do you sometimes end up with remaining commercial pieces or actual show being cutoff?I assume you have to wait for the show to have finished recording before the removal process can be applied.

Thanks

VideoReDo is not an automated process. It is a very powerful non-linear video editing suite. It has the ability to make edits at the single frame level, so you have total control about where the commercials are cut, and it is one of the few products available that support WTV files. That said, it does have an automated commercial removal procedure that you start after loading the file. I don't use it myself, as I am not completely satisfied with where it cuts. MCEBuddy also has an automatic commercial removal function, but again in my testing it was far worse than VRD. MCEBuddy IS completely automated, so once a TV program has been recorded it automatically converts it to H.264 video. Since that generally takes 2-5 hours (HD shows take much longer), depending on the file, that saves me a ton of time. It takes me about 5 minutes at most to remove the commercials from even a 2 hour movie, and since it's already in H.264 I just have to save the edited file. A two hour movie generally only takes about 2-3 minutes to save. But yes, I have to do it manually.